High School Graduations: Lively Bunch Of Grads Set For New Challenge

Bethel High School honor student Courtney Antone wanted to pay tribute to her family with a message on her mortarboard. But Bethel High School staff objected, so the University of Colorado-bound senior stripped the blue letters off her gold cap and settled for a wide smile and a wave as she entered Hampton Coliseum on Saturday morning.

But when she walked across the stage to collect her diploma, she signed "I love my Tones," the words she had hoped to wear.

It was an example of the Class of 2007's spirit.

Salutatorian Quadeisha Heckstall said the 426 graduates had not lost their fondness for running through the halls of their Hampton school and saying "tag, you're it," or their sense of defiance.

But they've grown and matured, shaped in part by events outside their school lives.

They watched the World Trade Center twin towers crumble, witnessed Hurricane Katrina's devastation and grieved for the Virginia Tech students and faculty killed two months ago.

Their reaction to each event was the same.

"We were told we were not allowed to pray in school," she said. "So ... we prayed anyway."

Valedictorian Jenna Ryan encouraged her "intelligent, lively and always charming" peers, who earned $5.2 million in scholarships, to explore the future but to "do work" in the process.

Class President Alex McNeal harked to the class sense of fun, asking them to "do the wave." Graduates complied with a rippling wave of green and gold.

Then he reminded them to thank those who helped them, to think forward and to remember, "we're through with high school and we're no longer under our parents' umbrella. ... This is it." *